


Tethered

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Holmescest if you squint - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:36:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft wishes it would rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tethered

 Sherlock was four. It rained.

It rained, and there were muddy little pools with little ripples and reflections that Sherlock liked to look at, soft mud he liked to pat, red wellies and no umbrella.

When Sherlock was four, it rained, and someone knocked him into the muddy little pool with the sharp little stones and Sherlock's sharp little cry of pain had Mycroft running to find his brother eyeing his scraped palms, eyes bright with angry tears. Mycroft didn't see who it was, Sherlock didn't say.

 _Mycroft_ , he said instead, throat catching on the syllables. _Mycroft._

Mycroft didn't ask. He hoisted his brother to his hip, red wellies smearing mud on his trousers. Sherlock watched him stop the swell of blood in awe, as though Mycroft made miracles, and let his miracle maker whisk him into a bath, tell him about the rain and the clouds and the water cycle. 

Sherlock asked a lot.

 

Sherlock was twelve. It rained, the afternoon skies as bruised as Sherlock's eyes, as angry as his mouth. He slipped around Mycroft, quick as lightning and Mycroft was left clutching at air. He left a trail of mud along the hallway. Mycroft heard the slam of the door over the rumble of clouds.

He didn't hear his door open over the rumble of clouds, rumbling well into the evening. Sherlock slipped in and startled him at his desk with a touch, still bruised and cut and streaked with mud, looking smaller and skinner than he was. This time, Mycroft asked.

 _Who, Sherlock? What happened? Why?  Why?_ Sherlock didn't say. A swollen lip trembled, and he crumpled against Mycroft, smearing him with mud.

Mycroft didn't push, steered his brother into the bath and rolled up his sleeves. Sherlock winced, went plaint in the water.

They induced the wind velocity.

 

The world was trying to drown itself. Sherlock was nineteen, and _he_   was trying to drown himself. Mycroft's heart dropped to his stomach.

His brother stood in his foyer swaying, and Mycroft could smell the cigarette smoke clinging to him like cologne. There was an undercurrent of dark frustration, one that followed Sherlock like a storm cloud over his head, and he was clenching his jaw so tightly that Mycroft's own hurt in sympathy. Sherlock grimaced, pushed past him violently. Mycroft closed the door against the gale, only to trail the one thundering through his hallway.

He found Sherlock bent over the toilet, retching with huge jerks of his whippet thin body. Mycroft's stomach roiled. He stepped out for a fresh towel, and when he returned, Sherlock wasn't vomiting, but remained bent over the toilet, head hanging, and only looked up when Mycroft held the soft cotton to him. He grabbed it, and threw himself back against the tub as though exhausted, looking pointedly away from Mycroft as he flushed away the sick and joined him on the tiles.

He was older now, skinnier now, sharp at the shoulders and sullen at the mouth. Mycroft took his wrist, wrapped around the entire circumference of it, and expected another sneering look Sherlock had by then mastered. It didn't come; Sherlock was looking at him as though he expected healing spells. As though Mycroft could make miracles, like the miracles he made when Sherlock was four.

Mycroft can't do magic. He left Sherlock sprawled there with his towel, dropping the limp wrist to the floor. Sherlock didn't move until he heard the rush of water into the bath.

Over the storm outside, over the splash of warm water, Mycroft suggested low tar. Sherlock commented on the texture of his wash cloth. They debated nicotine composition, probability of addiction.

 

Sherlock was twenty-four, and it wasn't raining and Mycroft wished it was because it was ominously quiet. It felt as though he and Sherlock had collapsed into different realities, and they probably had because Sherlock stared at him with eyes blunt and bleak, like they were travelling at breakneck speed along different vectors and Sherlock couldn't see him. The spotty tap dripped steadily into the sink, and Mycroft wondered if Sherlock could hear it, because it didn't seem as though Sherlock could hear him. 

Abject desperation arose and Mycroft was suddenly furious in the way he never was. His fury changed something that night in Sherlock's wreckage of a flat, and it was like an event horizon, but they both pretended as though they deleted it. 

They thought of it everyday of their lives. 

 

It rained. Sherlock was twenty-six. 

Sherlock was twenty-six, just out of the hospital, riding out waves after waves after waves of nausea on the chipped tiles of Montague Street, and it hurt to look at him, wretched and weak but blazing like a nova in his volatile anger directed at Mycroft, who couldn't bear to look.

But Mycroft looked, and Mycroft held, because Sherlock was trying to shake out of his brittle frame and float into the cosmos and if he went, Mycroft would follow – they were tethered together.  So they sat on the chipped tiles of Montague Street, with the spotty tap that that dripped and the too small bathtub full of chemical stains, Mycroft in his shirt, expensive material rolled up without a care, and Sherlock bare because his clothes had vomit on them. It was raining.

 _I was at the speed of light My I could see everything I didn't mean to overdose In fact I don't understand how I could have I bet you had it done._ Sherlock was talking in a spate of words, all in one breath and without punctuation, once he was submerged in the water. Mycroft felt as though he might throw up with relief. He said nothing.

 

Sherlock is thirty-seven. He gets shot.

It doesn't rain.

It's so absurd, so random, that it _doesn't rain._

Although, it's so random that, Mycroft thinks, standing by the shuttered window of the hospital, that he should have foreseen it, but it's like the predicting radioactive decay of an unstable isotope. Sherlock is anything but stable, and Mycroft can usually pick up signals from miles away.

It doesn't matter. Nothing matters – Mycroft is ready to rip the world to shreds, strip the very flesh off the damned woman's bones.

_Mycroft._

Sherlock's throat catches on his name, low and rasping and awful. Mycroft thinks of rain. He thinks of red wellies and mud and scrapes on his brother palm. He thinks of the hole in his brother's chest.

_Mycroft._

Mycroft walks to his bed. They talk like human beings, and it's _awful._ It's as though they've collapsed into different realities, and Mycroft can't just wash the wound and make it look as though he did magic.

He wishes he could. His brother clutches at him as though he can make miracles, and Mycroft wishes it would rain now. 

It doesn't rain. 

**Author's Note:**

> It was raining in February. It never rains in February and I got distracted.


End file.
